A major theme of the Fourth Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization in Incheon, Korea was focused on equipping believers in the workplace to share the gospel and participate in the Great Commission. At a press conference, representatives of the Lausanne Movement and the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) shared about new initiatives, including a special Business Bible and a day dedicated to pray for people in the workplace.
Joseph Vijayam, an advocate for workplace ministry, is a catalyst for the Lausanne Workplace Ministry Network, also Senior Associate of Technology for the Lausanne Movement and a member of the Business As Mission (BAM) Global Advisory Board. Born in Hyderabad, India and now living in Colorado Springs, CO, in the United States, Vijayam is the founder and chief executive officer of Olive Technology, a software development company.
At the Lausanne 4 press conference, Vijayam spoke with Samuel Chiang, WEA Deputy Secretary General for Ministries, about practical innovations to support Christians with missional intentions in the workplace, which encompasses a wide range of settings.
Vijayam spoke about how there had been a marked interest in workplace ministry by attendees at the Lausanne 4 Congress, with 1,450 participants from 56 nations in the workplace track engaging with 40 speakers, representing 12 regions of the “design movement” throughout the conference. This represented 30 percent overall of people at the event, not far off the 40 percent target hoped-for by the track organizers.
The press conference heard about an innovative launch of the Global Day of Faith at Work Network, agreed to be observed virtually on May 1, which is also International Labor Day.
This day of prayer for workers involved the Lausanne Workplace Network Workplace Ministry partnering with the WEA. Vijayam explained that this future event will involve taking a “day of faith at work” online to prayerfully bring both workers and colleagues before the Lord.
Another resource launched was a Business Bible with QR codes to help workers find encouragement to witness for Christ at work. It is a multimedia hard copy of the Bible, supported by the producers of The Chosen television series, according to Vijayam. Copies were given to attendees at the Lausanne Workplace Track.
Vijayam said the Workplace Track had been conducted with four other “issue networks” as part of the design movement at Lausanne 4. These were the workplace ministry, BAM network, the Academic and Academic Ministry and Education Network, and a fourth network.
Chiang said the WEA had been “extremely intrigued” about the notion of the Global Day of Faith for the Workplace, when approached for partnership.
The vision for it “was very close to my heart”, and represented a new direction for WEA. It took time to decide the appropriate day to mark the event (May 1). “In most parts of the world May 1 is a holiday and yet it’s a day to remember our laboring at work.”
Chiang had also been impressed by the number of participants at the Workplace Track for Lausanne 4. He lauded the hard working efforts of Vijayam and colleagues, saying, “We give praise God for that because there’s a deeper story yet to be done on that.”
He also spoke about the uniqueness of the Business Bible, a recently created resource. “When I first held it, I thought this was something really unique.” Chiang thanked generous donors for making the idea of this Bible a reality: “The amount of generosity of the people who created the Business Bible, and the way they generously gave for the sake of launching it, and also the commissioning… was incredible.”
Chiang also said that business people at Lausanne 4 had offered to take any leftover Business Bibles at the congress and then give them to people in their workplace settings. “And so it’s been a fabulous way to see how God has continually not only brought interest to the Business Bible, but also there’s a faith story to be carved out at the launch of the Lausanne Workplace Network. “
Vijayam then spoke about how the perception of workers was typically white collar but they are a minority and it’s the blue collar, or “no collar” workers who make up the majority of the work forces. A theme explored in the Workplace Track, in the Lausanne issue network, has been “social and distributed justice.” Vijayam further explained this as exploring justice issues for people dealing with oppressive situations at work.
“So we reflect on that. We do a public reading of Scripture every once a month and… use that as a content for us to study about justice and issues of equality, victimhood, oppression and things of that nature.”
All types of work needed to be considered when defining workplaces, according to Vijayam. This includes a wide range of workers, from university presidents to homemakers. He detailed the historic evaluation of this by evangelical leaders, and spoke of the importance in reflecting upon “sector and theological frameworks.” Workplaces were previously defined as both a mission field and a mission force in the Manila Manifesto, said Vijayam, recognising that the workplace is part of God’s plan for humanity.
“These discussions extended into the concept of integration. That was the big word, the integration of the workplace into the bigger plan of God’s mission and what does it look like to live like whole-life disciples at any level of work.”
Vijayam called the collaboration partnership with the WEA “exciting” because the Global Day of Faith at Work can involve whole churches and the WEA has the network to reach churches around the world. The other part of this “big push” is engaging with the theology for each sector of industry, particularly sectors “we don’t normally look at.”
“Even during this week we’ve had lots of conversations about how we can help with more writings and ideas to be presented to the global church on how we deal with social distributed justice.”
Chiang reiterated that all work is valued, from brick layers to people who put pavements on streets. In eternity, he challenged the view that believers will not be working. “We’ve got to go back to our Bibles and look, and what do you think is going to happen in eternity then?”
“So there are things that we recognise – we value all work. It’s absolutely, critically important. Every part, from bee keeping to cleaning out barns, is critically important to the question about the liturgy of commission.”
This liturgy had been printed in the Workplace Track workbook, guiding believers in praying for people at work.
Chiang, having read the liturgy, felt a sense of not only being commissioned but “as sense of, if you will, a whole undertaking.” He encouraged people to picture those colleagues and others being prayed for, under the guidance of the liturgy.
